In my staging room their are 16' long double stack storage tracks on a hollow knee wall covering the sewer line.
I dropped the 18 ga feeder lines into the hollow void and used a coat hanger to bring them forward through the top of the knee wall and dropped them down into an oversized 3/4" siding "J" channel.
At that point they are spliced into a 14 ga wire and run back to a terminal panel which slides out on drawer slides.
Above, the slots above are being cut so as to observe coupler action. The upper deck height allows manual access to any lower level cars.
Below, the far left end has the main feed from the primary panel which comes in through a 1/2" pvc pipe in the wall to continue on thru the J channel to the small local panel.
The staging panel flips up for service:
The left toggle chooses local or main control, the right toggle selects AC or DC for that area alone.
My main panel also rides on drawer slides which makes work easy. The panel hinges up and the MTH blocks roll out.
Note tape colors on the panel which translates to power pack tape colors and terminal strips. Colored thumb tacks denote block feeders for now. Plus number tags on wires and terminal strips match the toggle tag on the panel.
Although I am running switchable DC or AC conventional cab control around 200' of walls. I can choose to walk around the entire basement and select to control each train under either discipline and take local control at each town section without affecting train operation anywhere else on the layout.
When the main panel sends a through train into any one of 7 locally operated perimeter towns I can throw a switch and allow the main panel full temporary control while traveling through that town being switched.
As life goes on I no longer relish crawling under a layout.
